DESIGN, FABRICATION AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A RICE DESTONING MACHINE

Rice cleaning and separation has not received adequate attention in Nigeria, thus making the consumption of our locally grown rice unacceptable. These processes do not actually give the best of rice grain as some impurities and various types of contaminations of undesirable matter accompanied the rice grains. The general objective of the work is to design, fabricate and carry out the performance evaluation of a rice destoner. The destoner consists of the reciprocating and vibrating sieves. The machine was tested in terms of the rice separation efficiency, stone separation efficiency, tray loss and impurity level after separation. The result showed an average of 81.75%, 7.33%, 18.25% and 27.27% for rice separation efficiency, stone separation efficiency, tray loss and impurity after separation respectively for local rice variety under study. The developed machine has the promise of solving the problem of stone infestation usually encountered in locally produced rice. Keywords: fabrication and performance, rice destoner DOI : 10.7176/JNSR/9-22-07 Publication date: November 30 th 2019